Archive for October, 2009

Whack another item off the task list. The upstairs front room of my row house once was a beauty salon. There were stations set up with 20 amp plugs. I removed this and consolidated a couple of circuits which allowed me to remove a few breakers. There was also a lot of landline phone lines and I tugged a lotta that crap out.

GOD! My main panel is really gross. Its mounted on particle board, and the wall is wet to the touch. Hoo boy. Another interesting item, I encountered some of the old style wiring that uses fabric covered wiring a wooden raceways. [pic]. The existing wiring going to the furnace still has fabric on it too. A scary hallows eve indeed.

To produce your on powder from raw materials you can take and mix any adequate powder you like from known powder producers as Hoeganaes or Ecka or H.C. Stark. You “simply” have to adequately adapt your powder and process parameters. A very sufficient material is for example a stainless steel as 17-4 PH as described (on page 3) of the attached file.

I had some time at the airport and I worked up an initial plot of breakers, switches, plugs and appliances. I realized that what would make far more sense is to put a subpanel in the studio. I assume if I have a licensed electrician install this, getting this done will require removing some breakers out of the main box, because the total number of circuit breakers will exceed 200 amps.

Yesterday — I didnt work in my shop, I helped Imani finish her glass studio. This involved:

wake up at six-thirty

load vehicle with tools and building materials

drive an hour

load ventilation and duct work into crawl space

load supporting platform to be able to operate in crawl space

get more lumber

strengthen A-frame supports and create space to fit ventilation

at one point I was in the crawl space and stumbled. If you fall while walking on A-frame supports in a crawl space you’ll land on the homeowner’s drywall ceiling and probably punch through it. All I had available was one wrist to put down while arcing down towards the joists, smashed that up pretty good. Did not fall through

chop hole in ceiling for two fume hoods

assemble duct work in crawl space

chop hole in side of house for exit vent

connect ventilation (pre-wired by a bonifide electrician, nice)

make custom duct work connections

tape, screw, pop rivet

place 4, 36×36 inch, one inch thick stone slabs on work table

connect all hoses, oxygen/propane tanks for two glass torches

connect control box for kiln

head back at 10 pm, drive an hour

unload all tools/equipment out of car

find parking spot in canton

guess I breathed in a lot of insulation throat feels like razor blades.

Then I hung out in the shop for a bit to look into why the frickin’ roof is leaking. But Imani’s studio is pretty much ready to get started and I’m quite glad to have helped. May she make many many beautiful glass pieces.

I moved the washer and dryer into a basement room further into the front of the house. The process was fairly easy because someone had already installed a complete hook-up for the appliances. I bought a new dryer, Lyra did a kick ass job helping me get it down the basement steps. Moving the washer/dryer is a clutch move because it creates a utility room of around 300 square feet! There are steps that lead directly down from the studio into the room, and I will probably keep raw materials, the laser chiller and other big appliances down in that area.

…in the case of the front studio the insulation was not going to get covered with plastic, so I wanted to something a little different to preserve the very nice quality rafters in the ceiling. Lyra had a cool idea which was to paint the kraft paper on the insulation, so we spent a couple hours painting three rolls of R19….

Installation is easy. Just used a big clamp to go across a rafter…

…this supports the insulation so you can get in with a staple gun and tack it in place.

The picture doesnt really do it justice, it looks kind of gross in the photo but from the vantage point of the floor, the ceiling looks very interesting. The rafters are preserved and the painted paper looks very consistent with the original construction period. (Okay I dont know if that’s really a good thing.) The other thing that works nicely is the lighting hangs much lower than the rafters so it de-emphasizes the view of the ceiling anyway — visually you dont really pick up on very dark green latex/paper combination in between the rafters.

….finished up the ceiling insulation in the storage area. Did lots of prep for studio ceiling insulation. Painted with Lyra which I quite enjoyed. Spent two hours video chatting with this guy talking lasers.

Also started looking at the wiring in the basement — quite challenging — there’s a combination of old stuff (wood channels carrying bare wires), creative work done by a previous tenant, commercial wiring from when the place was a hair salon and stuff that is actually needed.

…they are all “triple” pane if you count the original single pane windows, and the two sets of single pane windows that were installed. The picture does not really show the extra panes I put in – there’s some cove molding that’s holding each new pane. The windows are nice, they let a lot of light into the shop. I also completely preserved the look of the garage from the outside, consistent with my plan for the building to look like no improvement has happened.

Handling the glass sucked for the most part. Tricks to remember are:

be light on the glass cutter. If you hear little chunks of glass breaking under the wheel you’re pushing too hard

once you score the glass, put a rod under the glass and use a board or some other something to press the whole plate down at once. This is helpful for longer pieces of glass.

if you’re making multiple panes, you really want them to be clean, dont leave mummified hand prints in between the layers of glass. So clean the panes really well and then put on gloves when you’re moving the pane into place.